*Are women more sexually liberated today than, say, 50 years ago and how does that affect man/woman relations?

(A discussion of women’s sexual freedom might include a look at the extraordinary popularity among women of a very erotic eBook, written by a woman, E-L. James,“Fifty Shades of Grey" (and the sequels) as well as a discussion of so-called “mommy porn” in general.).

*Is it true or not, as some men claim, that "Trying to reason with a woman is like trying to eat soup with a fork." If it isn't true, why isn't it? If it isn't true why do quite a few men think that it is?

*Are women’s GRE scores lower than men’s? If so, why?

*Do female students trade sex for grades?

*How common are sexual relations between student/teacher? Why do instances of female teacher/male student sexual encounters seem to get more press coverage than male teacher/female student relations? Or do they?

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Yes, some female students do in fact trade sex for grades. It occurs in secondary schools and in universities. In lower grades? Let's hope not. Would this have anything to do with the fact that GPA's show little difference between the genders but GRE scores for women are generally much lower than those for men?

As we all know women began to enter the work force in great numbers during WWII. That trend has accelerated until today families need two incomes in order to buy the latest iPods. These pernicious changes in family structure marked the eventual dissolution of the family as a cohesive, nuturing entity. Now there's seemingly no turning back, to hell with caring for the children, let them fend for themselves.

Yes, express. Home alone. Could the nation ever recoup that ideal of the perfect family when children always had a parent at home, when there was only one breadwinner? Instead of aggressively militating for equality in the workplace wouldn't it make more sense for both women and men to fight for decent wages - a single income that would allow one parent to stay home? Wouldn't everyone benefit?

"By the early 70’s the women had had enough bad treatment, and the feminist revolution began in earnest. The leaders did a marvelous job of identifying the problem, but alas, their solution was worse than the problem. They decided that women could be just like men, asking men out if they wanted; paying for dates if they chose (this is liberation?); and engaging in lots of sex, as long as they could have abortions to cover their mistakes. Unfortunately, women can’t enjoy casual sex without doing violence to their natures. And, they endure abortion even worse. This made the breach between the sexes even deeper. The divorce rate soared (in 1960 it was about 10%, now it is 50%). And, it is estimated now that 50%of the members of the National Organization of Women are lesbians. Clearly, NOW’s version of feminism isn’t working.

Others are starting to come forward with the same conclusion: the experiment didn’t work. Danielle Chrittendon writes in What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman “. . . the woman who comes of age today quickly discovers that she enjoys a . . . guarantee of “sexual equality”: the right to make love to a man and never see him again; the right to be insulted and demeaned if she refuses a man’s advances; the right to catch a sexually transmitted disease, that might, as a bonus, leave her infertile; the right to an abortion when things go wrong, or, as it may be, the right to bear a child out of wedlock. Indeed, in all the promises made to us about our ability to achieve freedom and independence as women, the promise of sexual emancipation may have been the most illusory.” In A Return to Modesty Wendy Shallit points out, “The peculiar way our culture tries to prevent young women from seeking more than ‘just sex,’ the way it attempts to rid us of our romantic hopes or, variously, our embarrassment and our ‘hangups,’ is a misguided effort. It is, I will argue, no less than an attempt to cure womanhood itself, and in many cases it has actually put us in danger.” And, argue she does, quite effectively, using articles written by the liberationists themselves in Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Mademoiselle: the liberated woman is not happy. Columnist Mona Charen recently opined that the abstinence program, Best Friends, which helps high school girls postpone sex and turn down drugs and alcohol, has given back to these girls their femininity. "

"By the early 70’s the women had had enough bad treatment, and the feminist revolution began in earnest. The leaders did a marvelous job of identifying the problem, but alas, their solution was worse than the problem. They decided that women could be just like men, asking men out if they wanted; paying for dates if they chose (this is liberation?); and engaging in lots of sex, as long as they could have abortions to cover their mistakes. Unfortunately, women can’t enjoy casual sex without doing violence to their natures. And, they endure abortion even worse. This made the breach between the sexes even deeper. The divorce rate soared (in 1960 it was about 10%, now it is 50%). And, it is estimated now that 50%of the members of the National Organization of Women are lesbians. Clearly, NOW’s version of feminism isn’t working.

Others are starting to come forward with the same conclusion: the experiment didn’t work. Danielle Chrittendon writes in What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman “. . . the woman who comes of age today quickly discovers that she enjoys a . . . guarantee of “sexual equality”: the right to make love to a man and never see him again; the right to be insulted and demeaned if she refuses a man’s advances; the right to catch a sexually transmitted disease, that might, as a bonus, leave her infertile; the right to an abortion when things go wrong, or, as it may be, the right to bear a child out of wedlock. Indeed, in all the promises made to us about our ability to achieve freedom and independence as women, the promise of sexual emancipation may have been the most illusory.” In A Return to Modesty Wendy Shallit points out, “The peculiar way our culture tries to prevent young women from seeking more than ‘just sex,’ the way it attempts to rid us of our romantic hopes or, variously, our embarrassment and our ‘hangups,’ is a misguided effort. It is, I will argue, no less than an attempt to cure womanhood itself, and in many cases it has actually put us in danger.” And, argue she does, quite effectively, using articles written by the liberationists themselves in Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Mademoiselle: the liberated woman is not happy. Columnist Mona Charen recently opined that the abstinence program, Best Friends, which helps high school girls postpone sex and turn down drugs and alcohol, has given back to these girls their femininity. "

I don't see how this makes things worse. Divorce rates have risen because women no longer feel the need to stay in an unhealthy marriage. How is that worse? Taking away a woman's choices in trade for less chance at an STD isn't a fair trade in my opinion. The breech between the sexes going deeper is just another way of saying that men no longer can just have their way with women. I totally disagree with the preacher and "others".

According to research, the top ten countries in which to raise children are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Belgium, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Turkey ranked behind Brazil, Israel, Armenia, Tunisia, and Bahrain, while coming ahead of Algeria, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Morocco.

New Findings Show Breastfeeding Could Prevent One Million Child Deaths Per Year.

"A woman in the US is more than 7 times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in her lifetime than a woman in Italy or Ireland. When it comes to the number of children enrolled in preschools or the political status of women, the United States also places in the bottom 10 countries of the developed world."

Betty Friedan, founder of NOW, referred to traditional family life as a "comfortable concentration camp" from which women needed liberation. Sheila Cronan, one of the feminist movements most respected leaders and spokeswomen said, "Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking marriage."

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s they launched an all-out assault on our nation's time-honored laws protecting the marriage union. Divorce was presented as an easy way out for the frustrated, disappointed or adventuresome.

Mel Krantzler, writing in Creative Divorce, stated: "To say goodbye is to say hello ... hello to a new life - to a new, freer, more self-assured you. Hello to new ways of looking at the world and of relating to people. Your divorce can turn out to be the very best thing that ever happened to you." That was a widely held professional opinion for almost a decade.

The number of displaced homemakers rose twenty-eight percent between 1975 and 1983 to more than three million women. Another twenty percent increase from 1983 to 1988 brought that number to more than four million. An astonishing sixty-one percent of those women suddenly left alone had children under the age of ten at home. Often without job skills and stranded without alimony or child support, as many as seventy percent of these women make less than ten thousand dollars a year, and fifty percent are employed at minimum wage or less. It is, thus, readily apparent why a full seventy-five percent of all Americans living below the poverty line in the United States are women and their children.

The book "Father and Child Reunion" does a terrific job of articulating how this has happened over the last 30 years and what we need to do to fix it. The author was on the board of the National Organization of Women (NOW) for more than one elected term and fought for female equality for many years. Only when the pendulum swung too far did he begin focusing on the issues that men need fixed.

Today women can choose to kill a fetus without the male having any right to participate in that decision, yet the male is enslaved for 18 to 23 years by that decision with child support - even if the woman tricked him purposely (by committing fraud) by saving his sperm and impregnating herself intentionally. The women's movement claims "my body, my choice" because of the 9 months of inconvenience to gestate a fetus, yet totally ignores the 18 years of effective slavery thrust on men by the decision to have that child! Outrageous, illogical and driven by a powerful feminist movement with no counter balancing men's rights political force.

To a reader who said liberalism’s freedoms, presumably sexual and economic freedoms, cannot possibly be construed as anti-woman, the reader Jesse Powell, who is a man, responds:

When a man says to a woman “you are free” he is at the same time saying “you are on your own.” Women’s liberation equals male abandonment. From the man’s point of view the purpose of liberating women is precisely to enable and justify abandoning women.

In the natural patriarchal order, men invest in women and women invest in children. This allows the child’s needs to be met, the woman’s needs to be met, and the man’s psychological needs to be met. If the woman breaks the contract by declaring “I am free” the man no longer has a reason or a motivation to invest in the woman. If the woman takes care of herself then the man taking care of the woman is pointless and redundant. If the woman is willful and disobedient then the man’s investment in the woman will be squandered. Either way, women’s independence destroys the man’s motivation to invest in the woman. This is why women’s liberation equals male abandonment.

Men’s abandonment of women equals women’s abandonment of children. When adults steal resources and time from children by not fully investing in children’s welfare this leads to an ongoing process of intergenerational deterioration. This is why in terms of family indicators the next generation is always worse off than the prior generation.

*****

Look at this sex discrimination suit by a Boston neurosurgeon against a fellow doctor. She won $1.6 million because he allegedly said insulting things about her ability as a female doctor. No woman would be punished for saying similar things about a man. In fact, women publicly say insulting things all the time about men and rarely suffer for it.

Why does Title IX, which has resulted in the disbanding of male collegiate athletic teams, exist? Why is a man who is stronger and more fit for combat than a woman ever passed over by a woman for a position in the military, police or firefighting except by bureaucratic coercion? Why do feminists make all citizens subsidize abortion and contraception? Why do they approve of taxpayer support of unwed mothers and day care? That is not freedom.

If feminists cherish freedom then why do they support unilateral divorce and the right of a person to strip a spouse of property and full custody of his children? Why do they support the power of government to force spouses who have been stripped of their property and children to pay child support on pain of fines or jail sentences? Why do they deny a fetus unwanted by a mother the freedom to live?

By flooding the labor market with women, feminism has led to the decline in male earning capacity and thus forced many women to work who do not wish to. By valuing sexual freedom, feminists necessarily devalue chastity, restricting the freedom of young women to choose the latter. By valuing masculine ambition, feminists devalue nurturing. By saying motherly care is just one of many options, feminism trivializes motherhood and restricts the freedom of the young to develop. None of us are free in the sense that we judge the possibilities before us entirely on our own. We are shaped by our culture.

By making choice the highest standard in personal relationships, feminism trivilializes loyalty and love. That makes people less free to love and express loyalty.

Inequality is innate. A regime that suppresses this truth denies individuals the freedom to attain self-awareness.

The air of permissiveness that liberalism wears is deceptive. If we are encouraged at every turn to choose selfishness, we are not permitted to be good.

“Regardless, while feminists do also have as a goal that women should actually be better off, they view liberation as an end in itself, and as a much higher priority than any measure that tried to help their circumstances while limiting their choices.”

This to me seems to be the fundamental basis of David’s argument in favor of feminism; that mere freedom by itself has “a much higher priority” than the large number of harms caused by women’s freedom. In other words freedom is valued above all regardless of the harm that freedom causes. This is an interesting moral position to uphold. Of course, this position cannot be upheld on a universal or consistent basis as people will always desire the “freedom” to engage in some behavior or to commit some act that is harmful to others. What about the “freedom” to shoplift? What about the “freedom” to commit adultery? What about the “freedom” of a woman to put her child in daycare? All of these proposed “freedoms” involve someone committing a harmful act against someone else for their own selfish benefit. This is exactly what is wrong with feminism. All of the “freedoms” that feminism bestows upon women are simply licenses for the woman to engage in some kind of selfish and harmful act against others for her own benefit. The “freedom” of feminism is predatory; this is exactly why feminism is wrong.

Now I would suppose that David would claim that the “collateral damage” of women’s liberation is less important than the “intended benefits” of women’s liberation. I would argue the precise opposite; that the “collateral damage” of feminism is of much greater importance than the “intended benefits”. I would furthermore argue that the “intended benefits” of feminism in reality have no moral legitimacy at all since all of the “intended benefits” of feminism are based on the woman violating her responsibilities towards others and are therefore morally corrupted.